Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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A bill revamping the state’s sex offender registry passed overwhelmingly during the 2009 General Assembly contains a loophole that means it doesn’t apply to those with similar convictions from other states who move to Iowa, state Rep. Chris Rants, R-Sioux City, told The Des Moines Register.
The bill, which passed the state Senate unanimously and the state House 93 to 3, ended the law banning some sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or day care and replaced it with exclusionary zones where registered sex offenders would be prohibited from working or visiting without permission. Do to the nature of the bill, and the political difficulty in tinkering with laws regarding sex offenders, the bill was negotiated behind closed doors and out of the public eye. This, Rants said, along with the quickness with which it was passed, is why the loophole wasn’t caught last year.
From The Register:
Rants contends the flaw could have been caught if the process had been more open.
“We warned folks there were going to be problems with their rush to get it down without a thorough discussion,” Rants said. “They just expected everyone to be quiet and go along with it with no public scrutiny.”
Rants, who is currently one of four men running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, was one of three lawmakers who voted against the changes, along with Reps. Dawn Pettengill and Doug Struyk.
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